20th December 2016

The movement towards creating social value is gaining momentum among students who want to make a difference. Compassion and empathy, coupled with the current state of inequities, has stimulated the need to take action. It is the range of experiences and interests that students bring to the classroom that create an engaging space where social entrepreneurship can be explored in an interdisciplinary way. Social entrepreneurship opens the door to possibilities beyond the traditional concept of two sectors and the notion of a single bottom line. The third sector, the social sector, merges these traditional concepts, and instead of working towards a single bottom line, social enterprises work towards two: profit and impact. In this case, it’s both.

Our next generation is told that they can change the world, but the tools that exist to help aid them in their crusade to make an impact are limited and scarce. It is this missing dimension that this project will try to address. Understanding what social value is, how it is created, and why it is difficult to measure are topics that provoke and can challenge our traditional beliefs of how our world operates. From world hunger and poverty to health care and education, the principles of social entrepreneurship are used to help create new solutions to social matters by reframing the issue and focusing on context. Mainstreaming social entrepreneurship education through curriculum and policy intervention will help with the process.

A focused debate on how the two eco-systems, university ecosystem and social entrepreneurship ecosystem, can be aligned in more productive and efficient way to produce socially responsible knowledge, practices and graduates.

The seminar is expected to produce evidence based input for policy recommendations to university leaders, professors and students. The research will begin with an assessment of existing practices as benchmarks.

Themes of the Seminar

Tenets of social enterprise ecosystem and university ecosystem

Social entrepreneurship models and cases

Regulatory frames and provisions of social entrepreneurship

Modes and means of interventions between university and SE organizations

The Ecosystem Needed for the Development of Social Enterprises

International experiences in Social Entrepreneurship on policy and market issues